Draft Day Trade Values

Ryan Pace is a wheeler and dealer.  There’s no question about that.  The question is whether his trades bring value to the Bears.  I’m not discussing the value of the players drafted versus those that he “traded away”.  I’m talking about the value of the picks involved in each trade.  For the first round, see my previous blog regarding the trade up for Justin Fields.  If you don’t already know, there’s a point value attached to each draft pick.  Let’s look at the value of each pick traded and see if Pace won his draft day trades.

Round 2

In the 2^nd round, Pace traded up to get Teven Jenkins.  In order to trade up, Pace traded away the 52^nd (2^nd round), 83^rd (3^rd round) and 204^th (6^th round) picks of this year’s draft.  In return he received the 39^th (2^nd round) and 151^st (5^th round) draft picks.

39^th = 510

52^nd = 380

83^rd = 175

151^st = 29.4

204^th = 8.2

The Bears traded away picks valued at 563.2 while they received picks valued at 539.4.  That’s a negative value of 23.8 or the equivalent of a mid-5^th round pick.  That’s a player like Jordan Howard or Jerry Azumah.  I’d love to have those guys back on the team.

Round 6

The Bears made one other move in this year’s draft.  Pace traded away the 208^th pick and received the 217^th and 250^th picks in this year’s draft.  

208^th = 6.6

217^th = 3

250^th = 1

Not a lot of value placed on the picks this late in the draft, but Pace traded away 6.6 points in pick value and received only 4 points in return.  A negative value of 2.6.  Paced traded away the equivalent of Patrick Mannelly or Adrian Peterson (no, not that AP, but the serviceable RB that the Bears drafted in 2002). Long snappers have underrated value in the league, but when one plays for 16 years, there’s definitely a lot of value there.

Losing Trades

For every trade Pace made this year, even when he traded back, he lost the trade.  Now, if Fields, Jenkins and the others drafted this year, help the Bears win a Super Bowl, will anyone care, probably not, but it’s hard to build a club for long term success when you’re routinely losing draft day trades as most successful teams build through the draft.  Other GMs must be salivating when that phone rings and they see it’s Halas Hall calling, and Ryan Pace is on the other end.